Hampshire College Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies courses, Fall 2012

This course is an introductory history course based entirely on primary literature, art, and music written and produced by women. We will read letters, scientific treatises, autobiographies, and political writings by prominent mystics (Saints Hildegard of Bingen, Catherine of Siena, and Teresa of Avila), proto-feminist writers (Christine de Pizan and Moderata Fonte), female physicians and midwives (Trotula and Jane Sharp), Jewish businesswomen (Glickl van Hameln), fake saints (Cecilia Ferazzi), courtesans (Veronica Franco), cross-dressing soldiers (Catalina/o de Erauso), and French revolutionaries (Olympe de Gouges). In addition, we will listen to music by Francesca Caccini and Italian nuns and view the art of Artemisia Gentileschi, Lavinia Fontana, and Sofonisba Anguissola.

African American dance and music traditions have played critical roles in African American struggles to sustain their humanity-- to express joy and pain through their bodies and through a particular relationship to rhythm. This class will explore the forms, contents and contexts of black traditions, which played a crucial role in shaping American dance in the twentieth century. Viewing American cultural history through the lens of movement and performance, we will focus on black protest traditions in discerning how the cakewalking performances of Ada Overton and George Walker; proto-feminist blues and jazz performances of Bessie Smith; tap dancing of Bill Robinson; protest and resistive choreographies of Katherine Dunham, Pearl Primus, and Urban Bush Women; and the hip-hop performances of Rennie Harris can be viewed as corporeal embodiments of the centuries-long freedom struggle-- whether non-violent, confrontational or contestational-- and how these modes of performance reflect an increasing independent free black voice demanding equal inclusion in the body politic. This course will provide a strong foundation for students who want to pursue Black Studies and will acquaint students with methodologies utilized in performance and historical studies.

The Americas have been characterized by the strictness of its laws in the criminalization of abortion. The only countries in the hemisphere in which the practice is legal are Canada, Cuba, the Guyanas and the US. There are countries such as Chile, El Salvador and Nicaragua in which abortion is criminalized even in cases in which the mother's life is at risk. This course introduces students to the politics of abortion in the Americas. Some of the questions we will consider are: what role have women's movements played in advancing abortion rights in the region? What has mattered most for the movements' success, their internal characteristics or external forces? Has the way the movement framed the demand for the right to abortion mattered? Has the increase in the number of women in positions of power made a difference? What about the coming to power of leftist governments in many Latin American countries? How has the political influence of the Catholic and Evangelical churches influenced policies in this area? What about the role of the anti choice movement? We will answer these questions by exploring examples from all across the region through primary and secondary sources.

This course introduces students to theories and methodologies in the interdisciplinary field of feminist science studies. Through collaborative faculty-student research projects, we will engage key conversations in the field. Specific areas of investigation include scientific cultures, science and the law, animal models, and science in the media and popular culture. While working on project-specific questions students will continuously engage larger questions such as: What kinds of knowledge count as "science?" What is objectivity? How do cultural assumptions shape scientific knowledge production in this and other historical periods? What is the relationship between "the body" and scientific data? Is feminist science possible?

Utilizing an interdisciplinary framework, this course will examine Latin@ communities in the United States, focusing on their historical, social, political and economic formations and practices. Drawing also from an Ethnic Studies perspective, we will examine what constitutes Latina/o Studies, what its intellectual goals are, and unravel its overlapping, yet distinguishing mission with Latin American area studies. To acquire a historical understanding of Latin@ histories within the United States, we will first review some historical literature and then attempt to identify comparative inter-Latin@ formations across multiple communities. We will then study particular themes and issues, such as identity politics and discourses, new and emerging Latin@ communities in the United States, labor policies, social movements, immigrant labor, and past and current xenophobic policies and practices against Latin@ communities. Throughout the semester we will also discuss how Latin@s are "remapping" the U.S. public sphere through their political, labor, and social practices, among other ways. Finally, as an interdisciplinary seminar, we will benefit from conducting and managing dialogues across multiple disciplines, synthesizing varying perspectives in our investigative inquiries.

The Revolution and its Discontents: How do we study a reality as complex and contested as that of contemporary Cuba? What intellectual, political and affective frameworks do we have available? What images of Cuba circulating in US popular and official culture do we have to recognize and perhaps displace to even begin? What are and have been the competing lenses for examining Cuban history? The Cuban Revolution? The post-1989 period? Can we extricate Cuba from the Cold War frameworks that have dominated US academic (and US political) approaches to the island, at least until recently, moving from "Cubanology" to "Cuban Studies," reinserting Cuba into academic arrangements made in her absence? How then do we locate Cuba analytically-as part of the Caribbean [with its history of plantation economies and slavery]? Latin America [conquered by the Spanish, and strongly influenced by the Cuban Revolution]? In relation to the US [with its "ties of singular intimacy"] ? To other socialist or "post-socialist" countries? As a significant part of the African diaspora? As part of worldwide neoliberal restructuring of economies, cultures, politics? This course will challenge the view of Cuban "exceptionalism," the view of Cuba as unique, unrelated politically, culturally, economically, or historically to the forces and imaginaries that have shaped other parts of the world. We will ask how race, gender, and sexuality have figured in defining the Cuban nation. Finally we will analyze the development of exilic culture and ideology in Miami, "Cuba's second largest city."

Advanced Readings in Work, Gender and Development: This is a research seminar on women, work, gender and development. We will read both classic and current readings on these topics from scholars from around the globe, and about men and women around the globe. Questions including gender and the economic crisis, the global assembly line, commodity chains, the informal economy, the care economy, migration, and the transformation of work within the household will be addressed. We will specifically address efforts to organize at many locations. Everyone will be expected to work on a research project, and to critique both the readings and one another's work. Prior experience in feminist studies, political economy, labor studies, or development studies is highly suggested.

An exploration of basic concepts and ideas that help one think critically and analytically about race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, and the local-transnational divide. Questions we will ask include: How do language, performativity, and political economy function as tools of cultural construction that produce us as we produce them? How do these factors regulate desire and serve to legitimize oppression and violence? In what ways are symbolic systems able to exceed social formations in which they are implicated? The course explores philosophical questions concerning intersectionality; embodiment; coalition and collectivity; postcolonial and global feminisms; neoliberalism and the commodification of difference; queer textuality and politics; theories of transformation and critique.

A course in reading films and videos as well as considering how they are produced historically, we will take gender as our point of departure. Engaging actively with making visual images will be part of our work. We explore the reasons for the historical absence of women filmmakers and study the works they produced when they won the right to do so. International cinemas, both dominant medias and films and videos made to oppose that system will be examined. We will analyze diverse works: from avant-garde director, Germaine Dulac, in Paris in the twenties of the last century to Ida Lupino, in Hollywood in the 50's to the 70's explosion of feminist films and videos and the historical and theoretical work that accompanied them. We will also consider several contemporary directors, though the largest bodies of work so far have been made by that group of women who were stirred into action by the Second Wave of the Women's Movement - who are still working today, such as: Sally Potter, Yvonne Rainer, Margarethe Von Trotta et al. Students are expected to attend all class meetings and learn to take detailed formal notes on all films and tapes screened. In addition to weekly assignments, an ambitious final project should be written, performed, photographed, filmed or installed.

This seminar will examine the history of US immigration from the founding of the American nation to the great waves of European, Asian, and Mexican immigration during the 19th and early 20th centuries, to the more recent flows from Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa. In addition to investigating how these groups were defined and treated in relation to each other by the media, we will consider the following questions: Who is an "American?" Has the definition shifted over time? How do contemporary political debates about immigration compare with those from previous eras? Is public opinion about immigration shaped by the media? How are arguments over citizenship bound up with ideas of race, class, ethnicity, gender, and nation? Special attention will be paid to the role of immigration in national politics; Hollywood's fabrication and circulation of ethnic stereotypes; and the virulent xenophobia routinely exhibited on cable news.

The main goal of this course is to examine the health issues/risks women face in the United States. We will examine the roles of medical research and the public health community in setting the health care agenda for women. Through the course students will gain a clearer understanding of the biology of life cycle changes, how health inequalities are generated and perpetuated, and how to think critically about their own health choices. From infancy to old age we will explore perceptions of wellness and illness across the life span focusing on such areas as: growth and development, menstruation, contraception, pregnancy and birth, menopause, osteoporosis and heart disease (to name a few). We start with women's health in antiquity and progress to contemporary times, charting the major trends in patterns of disease and poor health and examining women's bodies and women's role in constructing health dialogues in medicine.